1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to digital rights management, and more particularly, to systems and methods managing use of digital content in a plural device domain that is adaptive to external use data.
2. Description of Related Art
Increasingly widespread consumer access to broadband networks has created new problems in the distribution of digital content. On the one hand, it is desirable to make digital content conveniently available for all intended uses to consumers. For example, it may be desirable to provide streaming content to reception devices that are broadband network-enabled, to one or more mobile devices capable or disconnecting and reconnecting to a local network belonging to an account holder, or to local networks with much greater numbers of connected playing devices than traditionally encountered. Such uses may become increasingly important as consumers continue to purchase entertainment and communication devices of ever-increasing kinds.
Content providers should be able to control subscribers' access to or redistribution of digital content, with or without payment of additional fees. But this is becoming increasingly difficult as local subscriber networks and uses of content become more complex and varied. In a complex consuming environment, it may be difficult to discern legitimate uses of content from uses that are harmful to the content provider. For example, it may be desirable to provide a digital cable signal to multiple reception sites within a specific “personal domain,” such as a set-top boxes within the user's home, other devices within the user's home, office or automobile and even portable personal devices within the user's domain. Such arrangements may, for example, permit consumers to view purchased content in any desired room of the consumer's house. Various other redistribution schemes may also be desirable; for example, it may be desirable to permit redistribution from the cable reception device to any device owned by that same family regardless of whether it is in the consumer's primary house, vacation home, office, car or on his person so long as all of these locations belong to a specific “personal domain.” It may be desirable to permit all or some of such uses, while at the same time effectively preventing redistribution to non-subscribing consumers outside of the subscribing family or other authorized personal domain.
Current systems exist whereby a content rights holder or conditional access broadcaster can assign the right to view content to a single reception device that is associated with a single account/address/customer. Additionally, these systems may permit addition of receivers to an account and may charge according to the number of receivers. Such a system that combines multiple receivers into a single account is currently implemented by using back-office computer systems with a database program that associates two or more consumer reception devices with a single account/address/customer. Other systems exist, such as the Digital Transmission Content Protection system (DTCP), that limit the number of receiving devices that can be active for a particular transmission. DTCP limits a number of receiving devices to 63 in one instance. Such static numerical limits—whether one, two, sixty-three, or any other number—are essentially arbitrary and hence, may be overly restrictive or not restrictive enough. For example, such systems may not allow sufficient flexibility of the broad-band enabled home network to create a personal domain including several locations as well as mobile and portable devices. At the same time, other subscribers may easily redistribute protected content to one or more unauthorized destinations outside of the subscribing domain, without exceeding numerical limits.
Thus, it is desirable to provide a system and method for characterization of an acceptable personal domain, and control of distribution to the multiple devices in that personal domain, in a manner that permits a greater flexibility and precision of control over access and usage of content by multiple devices within the domain. It is further desirable that the system be difficult to circumvent, while remaining convenient and easy to use for intended uses of the content at issue, including permissible redistribution and use by mobile, remote and/or disconnected devices or clusters of devices within a user's authorized domain.